By Lucy Komisar
This is the kind of theater piece I really don’t like except I really liked it! Starts portentous, pretentious, full of cymbals crashing. Tacky show girls with feathers, sequins and glitter. Tacky men with buttocks poking out of g-strings. This is Las Vegas! Maybe not.
The devilish Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams with a screechy voice) promises, I have the ability to restore your youthfulness and beauty… for eternity.” What would people sacrifice for fame, sex, money?
And who are her customers? Two frenemies. Helen (Jennifer Simard) plain and Madeline (Megan Hilty) glamorous. Hilty, with a fine soprano, is a great comic musical star
Madeline about Helen: “She’s known me since my first nose.” Taking a compliment, she says thanks to my hair, makeup and neck team.” Neck team?
OK, this is satire! Marco Pennette’s book is just crazy enough, Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s music and lyrics take you along for a joy ride, and director Christopher Gattelli’s “realism” almost fools you till the end.
Helen is not gorgeous. Her fiancé, Ernest (Christopher Sieber) is a cosmetic surgeon. Madeline tells Helen: “You’re marrying a plastic surgeon? As in you’ll have botox and filler on hand 24/7? She suggests Helen should be a pharmacist, it’s like being a doctor and a cashier. (Hello U.S. medical industry!)
Helen remarks “How talented Mad was. No one could throw their legs wider.”
Madeline: “I love her like a twin who stole my nutrients in the womb.” Madeline’s stage play is called “Me! Me! Me!” It’s funny!
Fast forward, Madeline has stolen Ernest and is marrying him in a red rose covered bower. When they make the vows, doves, who have frozen to death on the balcony, are thrown out like dive bombs.
Helen will be in therapy. Ten years later, Madeline hasn’t worked in a while. She is making a commercial. A thin young woman in the same gown appears. Who is she? She is the “after.” Madeline’s facial horror is very funny. “Ingenue” to “Ingen-old.”
Meanwhile Helen has written a novel about Hollywood. She is now gorgeous and having a book opening. The publicist says, “Madeline will go to the opening of an envelope.” I love this show!
Madeline moans, “My skin is drooping.” She has to sleep upside down to give her body a break from gravity!
Helen appears. Now she looks pretty good. She scaled the wall, same way she escaped the mental institution. She turns to Ernest, the cosmetic surgeon: “You used to help poor starving children. Now you help rich women look like poor starving children.” Great line!
So, it’s a surreal comic satire of the beauty business.
Things move fast. There is murder planned.
Turns out that Helen has the same butterfly insignia that signifies Viola’s deal. She insists, “It’s for climate change, I’m political now.”
Surreal isn’t over. “Madeline” suffers a slow, terrifying tumble down the stairs, twisting and turning somersaults. She lands behind the couch, then gets up with nary a bruise. Hmmm.
Madeline has a rifle. She fires and Helen emerges with a really large smoking hole in her stomach. Helen knocks off Madeline’s head which lands on top of the bar. “Her head is à la carte.” Get it?
So hokey, funny, a take-off of old Hollywood musicals plus a bit of sci fi. I had a good time!
“Death Becomes Her.” Book by Marco Pennette, Music & lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, directed & choreographed by Christoper Gattelli. Based on film by Martin Donovan & David Koepp. Lunt-Fontanne Theatre 205 W 46th St, NYC. Runtime 2hrs30min. Opened Nov 21, 2024. Open run.